It’s been a while since I’ve done anything in the garage. With Winter in effect, there are a few things I can take care of on the 600RR before the next season. After the last trackday, the brake feel turned into a sloppy mess. Upon inspection, there was a strange clicking sound as the lever was pulled in, on top of the 1″+ of free lever travel. Getting the front brakes to work properly has been a major headache for me.

I decided that the stock Nissin brake master cylinder was the problem, and ditched it (and consequently my brake CRG lever) in favor of a Brembo Radial unit. By chance, I happened to come across an unused 19×18 master cylinder on eBay from a seller in the same city as me. I decided to go with the 19×18 Brembo over the 19×20, because the former allows slightly more lever travel and thus should be easier to modulate.

Alas, this brutish looking thing will hopefully be the savior to my brake woes.

I wasn’t baller enough to shell out the $700+ amount for the billet version of this master cylinder, so I settled with the forged.

Brembo uses a different thread pattern for the banjo bolt than Japanese manufacturers, and since I had to buy a new bolt anyway, I took the opportunity to get one in Titanium. No substantial reason why, just because. :)

Another component that had to be figured out was the brake reservoir bracket. The stock Nissin unit had an attachment for a bracket, but the Brembo doesn’t have one. I went with this trick little part, which attaches to a clamp bolt, to solve that problem.

I wanted the reservoir to be mounted close to its stock position, and I screwed up bending the bracket correctly, and I had to buy it twice. The seller also took forever and forgot to ship the second one to me, putting the project on hold for a while.

To bleed the brakes, I fitted an Aquafina bottle with a clear line to make things easier for me.

Eventually, the system was bled and a fresh length of tygon tubing was thrown on to finish everything off.

I ran out of brake fluid (1 liter bottle… that’s how much I’ve been bleeding brakes the past few months) at the end, so I’ll need to wait before I can top off the reservoir.

The lever feel from the Brembo is perfect for me, and a great deal stiffer than the stock cylinder was. If all goes well, the brakes will stay like this and I can stop having them on my mind.